Spy movies may have changed a lot over time, but they refuse to abandon their relevance and there we have just around the corner the penultimate installment of Mission Impossiblea saga that began in the 60s as a social expression of atomic anxieties and today serves as the actor’s personal circus show Tom Cruise. There are more surprising relationships between cinema and espionage than the mere representation of the conflicts of its era, and that is the basis of the exhibition Top secret. Cinema and espionagein which the cultural center of the Fundación La Caixa collaborates again with the Cinémathèque française to explore an alternative history of the genre and its links to historical events.
Through 270 heterogeneous pieces, ranging from mythomaniac memories of the seventh art to true accessories, it is exhibited the role of cinema as an instrument of propaganda and even as a resource for the profession of the secret agent, in which the registration of images is a common practice. Art or technique, the production of sounds and images is a common trade supported by cameras and microphones that even date back to the 19th century. A starting point for a chronological journey that spans a century, going through James Bond and coming to Edward Snowden, exploring a relationship that plays out in both world history and geography. According to Elia Durán, director of the Foundation, “through the screen we can build the geopolitics of the 20th century. It invites us to reflect on the secret, and a society that extends its control mechanisms over its citizens. We can all be spies or spied on “.
Top secret. Cinema and espionage It features costumes, files, declassified documents, original posters, photographs, real artifacts, installations, artistic works, and clips from up to 90 films that show the dispersal of conflict foci, touring Europe with The Kremlin letter (1970) until the series’ Middle Eastern conflicts office of infiltrators (2015). for the commissioner Matthew Orleans“the dialogue of the objects is very heterogeneous but what unites them is the spatial sense. Contemporary myths come from the cinema but the relationship with reality was sometimes very close”.
Film fiction and historical reality face each other from their literary base, paying attention to great authors such as Ian Fleming, Graham Greene o Tom Clancyreeling off the themes that make the spy an ideal romantic character to become a mirror of the fantasies of the filmmakers and the actors themselves, from identity changes to makeup. What is the most dangerous job in the world if not a great interpretation 24 hours a day? “Espionage is both the oldest profession and the oldest genre, that complex relationship goes from documentary to action cinema. The paradox is amplified with reality and fiction, there is a mystery, narrative, characters with neurosis and inner world versus the political one”.
The exhibition walks through the cinematographic genres to the beat of the changing times, from Fritz Lang’s thrillers from the 40s, with the tensions of recent wars, to comedies like Modesty Blaise, superagente femenino (1966), which gives a good idea of the height of popularity in the decade of Cold War tensions, when Western spy movies responded with propaganda that came with a load of liberalism under its arm. But there was also an incessant dialogue between East and West thanks to the cinema, which was the informant of the mood and technological advances of the enemy. The 70s would see the passage of auteur cinema as The conversation (1974) by Francis F. Coppola to series B, but they are also witnesses to the game of transfers between fiction and reality with which he constantly plays Top Secretwhen the former British MI6 spy John le Carre he became one of the most famous writers of the genre, placing his intrigues on both sides of the Wall, reinventing in his work the security of the communist state that he knew very well.